Previously, HGST already offered a 10TB helium-filled HDD but as a part of its Archive Ha series, which uses shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology not usually suitable for constant usage. Today, HGST has become a thorn in Seagate's eye by announcing and launching the new Ultrastar He10 HDD which uses traditional perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology. The Ultrastar He10 uses HGST's HelioSeal technology, hermetically sealing platters in an enclosure filled with helium rather than air. It also uses 7Stac technology, which means it uses seven platters packaged in the same 1-inch form factor used by traditional 3.5-inch HDDs.

According to HGST, packing the drive in helium and implementing some other improvements, allows the Ultrastar He10 no only to offer 25 percent more capacity but also do it by consuming 43 percent less power compared to a 8TB air-based HDD. The same improvements also allowed HGST to rate the Ultrastar He10 with 2.5 million hour MTBF, which is 25 percent higher than any other HDD on the market as well as back it with a 5-year warranty.

According to published specifications, the new HGST Ultrastar He10 will be available in SATA 6Gbps and SAS 12Gbps versions and offer sustained transfer rates of 249/225 MB/s. It also comes with some enterprise features like Secure Erase, Self-Encrypting/TCG Drives and RAID Rebuild Assist mode. The SATA 6Gbps version of the Ultrastar He10 uses 6.8 and 5.0 Watts in active and idle modes (9.5/5.8 Watts for the 12Gbps SAS version).

According to HGST, the company managed to ship over 4 million helium-filled HDDs up to date. Helium-filled HDDs from HGST are usually a bit pricier compared to standard HDDs but in the end offer TCO (total cost of ownership) due to their lower power consumption and higher capacity.

Unfortunately, HGST did not announce the precise price of the new Ultrastar He10 HDD but you can expect it to retail at around US $800 considering that the 8TB Ultrastar He8 HDD now sells for around US $550.

HGST has revealed the world’s first 10TB hard drive, but you probably won’t be installing one anytime soon.

The company has been working on the 10TB SMR HelioSeal hard drive for months and now it is almost ready to hit the market.

The drive uses Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) to boost density, thus enabling HGST to cram more data on every platter. ZDnet got a quick peek at the drive at a Linux event in Boston, which also featured a burning effigy of Nick Farrell.

Although we’ve covered some SMR drives in the past, the technology is still not very mature and so far it’s been limited to niche drives and enterprise designs, not consumer hard drives. HGST’s new drive is no exception – it is designed for data centres rather than PCs. While you won’t use it to store your music and video, you might end up streaming them from one of these babies.

Although data centres are slowly turning to SSDs for many hosts, even on cheap shared hosting packages, there is still a need for affordable mechanical storage. Even when hard drives are completely phased out from the frontline, they still have a role to play as backup drives.

HGST, which is a part of Western Digital, has launched the Ultrastar C10K1800, a new 2.5-inch 10,000RPM HDD aimed to be used in enterprise and data center applications.

While the Ultrastar C10K family has been limited at 1.2TB and 6Gbps SAS interface, HGST has now managed to squeeze in 1.8TB inside a 2.5-inch form-factor and equip the Ultrastar C10K1800 with a 12Gbps SAS interface. In addition to the launch of the new Ultrastar C10K1800 HDD, HGST has also announced that the entire Ultrastar C10K series will be now moving to 12Gbps SAS interface.

While SSDs will be the next big thing, there are still many applications where IOPS performance is not everything and where the actual cost per GB is still much more important, and that is exactly the market that HGST aims with its Ultrastar C10K1800 HDD.

According to HGST, the new C10K1800 HDD will also bring an improved performance when compared to previous Ultrastar C10K HDDs, mostly thanks to a new Media Cache feature which is a disk-based caching technology. According to HGST, the performance is 2.5x higher in random write and 23 percent higher in sequential acces when compared to previous Ultrastar C10K HDD generation. While it is still not clear how much capacity is being reserved for the Media Cache feature, HGST did note that it has no effect on the advertised capacity. This Media Cache feature will also be available for the entire Ultrastar C10K family.

In addition to the performance improvements, HGST also claims that it managed to improve the power efficiency on the new C10K1800, which is now up to seven percent better in both idle and load usage scenarios, when compared to previous Ultrastar C10K generation HDDs. The Ultrastar C10K1800 also brings new security and encryption options including Instant Secure Erase (ISE), Trusted Computing Group (TCG) enterprise SSC-compliant Self-Encrypting Drives (SED), and TCG enterprise SED with FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) 140-2 certification, Level 2.

As it was the case with previous Ultrastar C10K family HDDs, the new C10K1800 will be also available in 4K native/512 emulation and 512 native versions. The Ultrastar C10K1800 hard drive is being qualified by select OEMs and should be already shipping while The FIPS certified models will be available in January 2015.

HGST also announced that its 512 emulation 15K enterprise-class Ultrastar C15K600 will be shipping in July.

HGST has started shipping 6TB Ultrastar He6 hard drives designed for corporate users and data centres.

The drives are hermetically sealed and filled with helium, which is one seventh the density of air. Thanks to HGST’s HelioSeal technology, the new drives can be liquid cooled – in fact they are capable of operating submersed in liquid.

The seven platter design is lighter than standard five platter 3.5-inch drives and no, helium has nothing to do with it. It has the highest data density of any 3.5-inch drive and the lowest power consumption per TB of storage. It also generates less heat than a standard five-platter drive.

HGST is already working with HP, Netflix, Huawei and CERN to certify the drive and give their servers a squeaky voice.

HGST, formerly known as the Hitachi Global Storage Technologies unit it was bought by Western Digital, has announced the industry's highest-capacity 10,0000 RPM enterprise-class hard drive, the Ultrastar C10K1200.

The new Ultrastar C10K1200 provides an impressive capacity extension to HGST's proven Ultrastar C10K900 model and this 2.5-inch features SAS 6Gb/s interface and impressive 64MB cache buffer. Its fast 10K rotational speed, combined with all features and drive's low power, results in higher density servers, blades and network storage arrays.

With 1.2TB of capacity, the new Ultrastar C10K1200 also comes with Fluid Dynamic Bearing motor for low acoustic rating and improved data integrity as well as the Rotational Vibration Safeguard that anticipates and counteracts disturbances that can occur in multi-drive configurations and the HGST's patented head load/unload ramp to minimize integration induced drive damage. It also comes with Bulk Data Encryption for security.

According to HGST, the new 2.5-inch Ultrastar C10K1200 HDD is shipping today and has already been qualified by select OEMs.